Portland police officers Michele Boer and Bradley J. Kula cleared a welfare check and drove to the top of a Northeast Portland garage for some down time during their March 4 night shift.

Boer described the open-air rooftop level of the Lloyd District garage as a comfortable place to check her e-mails, write reports and sit car-to-car with another officer between calls -- "a nice and quiet area for blocks in each direction."

But within minutes, an armed man with a 12-gauge Benelli Nova pump action shotgun surprised the two officers in an unprovoked ambush, forcing the officers to scramble for cover to save their lives.

The stranger, later identified as 32-year-old Santiago A. Cisneros III, seemed to be "hunting for Michele," Kula told grand jurors.

Boer crawled on her hands and knees beside her patrol car, while Kula lay on his stomach behind his car and fired back in what both described as an instant gun battle that lasted no longer than 45 seconds.

Their dramatic testimony to a Multnomah County grand jury, from a transcript released Thursday, offered a rare first-hand account of the officers' rush of fear and adrenalin when they were confronted with the prospect of their own death. Chief Mike Reese praised the officers for keeping the "presence of mind" and reacting instinctively to take cover, while staying mindful of their backdrop when shooting and avoiding firing at each other.

An audiotape of Boer's first radio call to dispatch is chilling. Her voice shaky and frightened, she yelled, "We need cars at 7th and Lloyd. Somebody is shooting at us!

The officers fatally shot Cisneros, a U.S. Army veteran who most recently worked as a legal intern in Seattle and suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. He sustained nine gunshot wounds. They mostly struck his legs, and one hit under his chin, perforating his jugular vein. He was pronounced dead less than an hour after the shootout at 11:20 p.m. The grand jury found no criminal wrongdoing by police.

At one point, Boer, crouched down behind the rear driver's side wheel of her patrol car, turned around to find Cisneros standing about three feet from her, aiming the shotgun at her.

"The gun was pointing at my face," she testified. "The only thing I could think of when I was on my knees is that I was going to die."

Thoughts of her relatives flashed through her mind "almost like a Rolodex,'' Boer said.

"I started thinking of my family," she said, "and thinking that this was it."

Kula said he heard a "primal, guttural scream of fear," and didn't register right away that the screams were from Boer, who Cisneros was chasing around her patrol car. Kula initially thought Cisneros was holding an armor-piercing rifle, not a shotgun.

"All I can think of....," Kula testified, "I've got to stop him before he gets a shot off at Michele."

The ordeal began about 10:45 p.m. The two officers were parked car-to-car for less than a minute when Cisneros' dark BMW drove up to the top level and stopped in the middle of the lot, facing the patrol cars. Kula, who had driven behind Boer up the garage ramp, said he hadn't noticed any headlights from a car following him.

"We just kind of wondered what is going on?" Boer testified.

She could tell Cisneros was talking on his cell phone. She drove her patrol car around to shine her car's spotlilght on the BMW, and suddenly Cisneros stepped out and walked to his trunk.

"Before I could even put it in park, he comes up with a shotgun and...I get out of my car and he turns towards me. He racks the shotgun and he fires it," Boer testified. "He's holding it up at his shoulder and he's looking at me."

She estimated Cisneros was about 20 feet away, standing by the right rear bumper of his car, when he first fired at her. She ran behind her open car door for cover. Boer said Cisneros then charged toward her, and she dropped to her knees.

She peered under her car to see if she could see Cisneros' feet, but could not. Kneeling near the left rear tire of her car, "when I turned around on my hands and knees, he was right like two or three feet from me," she said, with the shotgun pointed at her face.

Cisneros didn't fire, though. Boer said she was not sure if his shotgun had jammed or he had run out of ammunition.

When Kula first saw Cisneros with a weapon, he thought it was a rifle. He yelled, "Hey what are you doing? Stop put the gun down. Stop."

Kula said Cisneros then turned toward him. Kula scrambled around his car, flat on his stomach. "Stop! Put the gun down!" Kula yelled. He said he believed Cisneros fired a round at him.

"As I'm shooting him, it doesn't seem like anything is happening, he's not stopping," Kula testified. "It's not like in the movies, where you get shot, they fly back. Nothing is happening."

Boer said she didn't have time to aim through her gun's sight. "It was just like he was attacking us and he wanted us dead," she said.

Police also recovered one live shotgun round on the ground. Investigators believe Cisneros had the live round already in the chamber when he first racked his shotgun, ejecting it, before he fired his first shot.

Cisneros never collapsed, but seemed to give up, Kula said. He walked toward the back of Boer's patrol car, laid down on his side, and put the shotgun beside him.

Boer was physically shaking when other officers arrived, unable to put her gun back in her holster. Sgt. John Birkinbine had her place it on her car's trunk.

"I felt like I couldn't breathe," Boer said. My gun started shaking all over the place."

Birkinbine told jurors: "She had just used that handgun to save her life, and the idea of putting it away...she just was not ready to do that yet."

Officers providing back-up found what they described as loud Rap music blaring from Cisneros' BMW, and an iPhone resting on the center console in the car, according to police testimony.

Around 11:45 p.m., a friend of Cisneros' mother, Janet Putnam, called the non-emergency Portland police line from Idaho Falls. She told dispatch that Cisneros' mother had been on the phone with her son, heard gunshots and was desperate for more information.

"He said police were coming and they were taking him to a high place. Then he said, 'I love you mom, and then she heard gunshots and people shouting," Putnam told dispatch. "He has post traumatic stress disorder. He's been off his medication and wasn't making sense."

His brother, Diego Cisneros, had spoken to Santiago Cisneros about 8:30 p.m. that night, after learning he was in town. Diego Cisneros went downtown to meet him. When he couldn't find him at Southwest Madison and Fourth Avenue, he phoned him and they decided to meet up at their sister's home.

While they waited for Santiago Cisneros to arrive, their mother called the sister from Idaho, hysterical.

"You need to get to Ago," she implored Diego Cisneros. His mother said Santiago had told her "police are forcing him higher...And then she heard loud, like she said trash can lids getting slammed together...Then she heard someone yelling, 'Stop Firing! Stop Firing!' "

Diego Cisneros drove to North Precinct to seek help. An officer initially brushed him off, but he urged, "Please I think it's my brother! I think he's been shot."

Diego Cisneros was then taken in the precinct, and questioned by police and detectives until about 1:30 a.m. Diego Cisneros told jurors he was disturbed police hadn't informed him of his brother's death until early the next morning.

"I don't know why they couldn't tell me, 'I'm sorry, he's deceased,' instead of making me sit there and just get sick in my stomach," Diego Cisneros testified. "There has to be some kind of other protocol for how they handled these situations."

Cisneros, born in Ridegcrest, Cal., grew up in Idaho Falls. After high school, he entered the U.S.Army, where he was trained as a track vehicle mechanic and served in Iraq. He had served in the army from May 2002 to May 2005. Most recently, he had been living in Seattle, where he worked as a legal intern for a Seattle law firm.

Santiago Cisneros' father told officers that his son was diagnosed after his military service with post-traumatic stress. Santiago had been hospitalized for about six months in California, but was prescribed medications to manage it. He also said his son suffered from depression.

"We were very encouraged because it seemed like he had recovered completely, but he still had to be on the medication," he said.

Santiago Cisneros Sr. , who lives in Portland, said he did not know his oldest son was in town until March 3, the day before his death, when his son left a note at his apartment.

It read: "I will see you soon. We will talk and laugh. Love, Ago."

He laid his son to rest March 19 at Willamette National Cemetery with military honors.